


when our eyes meet (oh yeah)

by liadan14



Series: lover with a radar phone [3]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Child Abuse, Coming Untouched, Established Relationship, M/M, Neil Hargrove's A+ Parenting, Oral Sex, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Secret Relationship, Yup it's one of those fics with pining in an established relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:27:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22351822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liadan14/pseuds/liadan14
Summary: He’s been getting jealous recently. Jealous of Steve, when he decides he wants to go in with the nerds, hang out with them for a while. He asks Billy, sometimes, all fake casual, if he wants to come in, too, and kick Steve’s ass at pinball, but Billy always shrugs him off, tells him he’s got other plans. He doesn’t like the way he feels, though, watching Steve’s retreating back, seeing his smiling face when he leaves the arcade with at least one of the kids (usually Henderson) yelling something excitedly in his ear. Makes Billy feel wrong-footed and left out. He hates that shit.He’s jealous of the kids, too, which is worse. Jealous of Steve’s attention, even though he knows it’s not the same as what he gets in darkened rooms and secret spaces.He still wants.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Series: lover with a radar phone [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1571581
Comments: 31
Kudos: 337





	when our eyes meet (oh yeah)

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Contains both implied child abuse and in one scene actual described child abuse. Be warned. There's also use of the f-slur

Billy doesn’t come in with the kids when they go to the arcade or the movies or whatever. He’s not a nerd and he’s not a pedo and the last thing he needs is Neil thinking he’s either. Mostly, he drives Max wherever she wants to go and either spends an hour or two reading whatever used paperback he’s hiding in the glove compartment while she does her thing, or.

Or.

Well.

But the thing is, he’s been getting jealous recently. Jealous of Steve, when he decides he wants to go in with the nerds, hang out with them for a while. He asks Billy, sometimes, all fake casual, if he wants to come in, too, and kick Steve’s ass at pinball, but Billy always shrugs him off, tells him he’s got other plans. He doesn’t like the way he feels, though, watching Steve’s retreating back, seeing his smiling face when he leaves the arcade with at least one of the kids (usually Henderson) yelling something excitedly in his ear. Makes Billy feel wrong-footed and left out. He hates that shit.

He’s jealous of the kids, too, which is worse. Jealous of Steve’s attention, even though he knows it’s not the same as what he gets in darkened rooms and secret spaces. 

He still wants.

There’s an empty, yearning pit in Billy’s stomach that needs filling. He used to fill it with booze and violence, fill it with hurt until it felt like his dad was filling it too, in his own way. He’s trying so hard to do better now, though, and better means empty. Better means Max no longer looking at him with fear in her eyes. Better means sweat prickling on the back of his neck while he apologizes to her dumb friends. Better means groveling, means worthlessness, means wondering if it’s even worth sticking around or if he should just make a break for it, leave this shithole town and try again somewhere else, who cares if he’s only seventeen, who cares if he ends up broke and desperate within a week?

But better also means Steve’s hands gentle on Billy’s skin. Means Steve cleaning him up when he needs it, means Steve telling him how good he is, how hot he is, how perfect he is for Steve. Each word out of Steve’s mouth is a drop of water in the desert of Billy’s neediness and Billy hate it, hates himself for basking in Steve’s attention, for wanting all of it all the time. 

Billy also really wants to see the new Friday the Thirteenth movie. 

He drives Max and Baby Byers to the mall, fingers drumming anxiously on his steering wheel. They’re talking loudly about the movie and about how it’s not really all that scary at all, and how it’s dumb they’re not allowed to see it just because they’re too young. The other, meaner Billy living under his skin wants to taunt Max for waking up screaming twice last month from nightmares. In the morning she’d said she’d dreamt of something she’d seen on TV, and Billy had gotten a knee to the gut for not keeping a closer eye to make sure she was watching something age-appropriate.

But Max doesn’t know that.

And Billy used to watch horror movies, by himself on the couch when his dad was out getting to know whoever came before Susan, when he was Max’s age. He’d gone to bed alone and terrified in the dark. He’d woken up in the morning just fine and telling himself what a wimp he was for being scared. Max wakes up still scared. Billy’s thought about asking her why, but he’s not sure he can take hearing her say that it’s him she’s scared of.

Not to mention, Baby Byers gets called Zombie Boy by half the town. Billy still hasn’t worked out why. He looks like he’ll break if you breathe too hard on him, but he’s the only one of Max’s friends who doesn’t mind riding with Billy, the only one not still scared of him.

Billy’s trying to remember that there’s almost always more than meets the eye.

Steve asks him, when they meet up in front of the mall, two brats in Billy’s care and four in Steve’s, if he’s coming in.

Billy surprises everyone including himself when he says yes.

Steve smiles at him, wide and goofy, and Billy wants to tell him to _tone it down, you idiot_. He might as well be wearing a sign that says, _I’m fucking Billy Hargrove and he loves it_. He doesn’t. He rubs his hand over the back of his neck and scuffs his sneakers along the curb while the kids yell at Steve for asking him in the first place.

“Hey,” Steve says. “Hey, dipshits! Do you know how much gas money it costs, driving you guys all over town? Least he can get out of it is a trip to the mall.”

“Thanks, princess,” Billy sneers. “But they don’t sell shit here that I want to buy. I’m here for the movie.”

“What movie?” Steve asks.

“Friday the Thirteenth,” Billy says, wearing his most punchable grin.

An outcry of rage and injustice spreads amongst the teens.

“Well, I guess you’re stuck with me, then,” Steve says, nonchalant. “I was headed to that too.”

“Sure you can handle it?” Billy taunts.

“I can handle plenty.”

“If you say so, princess.”

Henderson throws his arms out wide, gesturing, Billy assumes, to the size of his bafflement. It is large. “I’m sorry,” he lisps, “did we all just forget what happened in November? Billy is _never_ allowed to join in.”

Steve rolls his eyes and at least three of the kids say, “Oh my god, _Dustin_.”

“C’mon,” Max says brusquely. “We’re gonna miss the previews.”

Henderson whines all the way to the theater, but he shuts up when Steve and Billy go halfsies on snacks for the group. “I knew there was a catch to this,” Billy mutters to Steve, coughing up ten bucks so the brats can stuff their faces and shut up and not look at Billy too closely. 

Steve grins at him. “You saw through my evil plan.”

“Ooh, Steve Harrington, evil mastermind,” Billy shoots back. “A likely story.”

They watch the brats walk into the theater opposite theirs, and then sit down two rows from the back with their own popcorn and drinks, spread out on the seat between them so no one watching will think they’re sitting too close together.

The kids sneak in midway through the third preview. They sink down low in the third row, as if Billy and Steve are not going to realize how obviously the group of six teens is them. “Idiots,” Billy scoffs, scooping up a handful of popcorn.

Steve shrugs. Billy can almost see it out of his peripheral vision, but he keeps his eyes on the screen. “At least this way we can keep an eye on them.” 

Billy pretends to be really into the movie, pretends to care. He’d wanted to see it, it’s true, enough to overcome his fear of being seen with Steve. But he still pretends it’s way more interesting than it is Pretends this isn’t what he wants desperately: to be with Steve, outside their cocoon. To be someone worth being seen with. Pretends he doesn’t see Sinclair sneak his arm around Max when it gets really scary, too. Afterwards, he’s even nice enough to pretend the kids weren’t right there in the movie with them.

When they leave, Henderson lets Billy drive him back. “It makes sense,” he blusters. “I live between Max and Will.”

For Steve, it’s apparently game on, after that. Instead of just asking Billy to come hang out with him and the nerds once, he’ll ask four times, five times, _are you suuuuure_ , until Billy gives in.

He becomes an eighth wheel on occasion, too old and too desperate to seem even older to be a part of their Party, but still there because Steve asks him to be. He sucks at Pinball. He makes sure to only agree at most once a week, spends the rest of the time chain-smoking on the hood of his car, reading Hemingway and cursing his English teacher. He won’t be caught dead playing D&D with any of them, makes sure to remind them how dumb it is as loud as he can.

Billy’s careful about it, he thinks. He makes sure to make an appearance at someone or other’s party every week, to balance it out. Every two weeks, at least. He’ll do a keg stand, take his shirt off, yell some quotes from a Mötley Crüe song, flirt with someone’s sister. If he’s lucky, he can fit all that into the first half hour and get kicked out. If he’s not, he’ll stick around another two. 

He makes sure no one follows him when he sneaks over to Steve’s. He climbs in through the window even though he’s been doing this three months and Steve’s parents have only been there once.

He’s got it all under control.

Except.

Except Steve’s hands are warm and a little clammy over his, teaching him how to work the controls on the pinball machine. 

Except Steve’s body is even warmer against his, side by side on the hood of one of their cars, smoking while the kids play just one more round. 

Except Steve’s eyes meet his, dark and unreadable, in the low light of some loser’s house party over the head of whatever girl he’s flirting with.

Except the brush of their knuckles against each other, walking through the woods trying to find the last of the nerd herd to round them up and bring them home, sends electric sparks down Billy’s back.

Except their fingers meet in the popcorn sitting between them at the movies, touch briefly and pull away in an instant.

Billy’s got no self-control around that, no sense of shame, no _respect and responsibility_. He’s like a dog, belly-up and begging for more, and it’s only a matter of time.

“You should lay off Steve,” Max tells him, slouched in the passenger seat.

“What do you mean?” Billy asks, light and not at all like he’s about to have a heart attack.

Max looks out the window, fiddles with the drawstring on her sweatshirt. It’s red, and it clashes badly with her hair. “You know. After that time at the Byers house. You scare him.”

Last night, Steve had bent Billy over his desk and licked into his asshole. Billy had begged him to get on with it, to fuck him already, to just do it, he’d begged and yelled and threatened when he couldn’t wait anymore.

Steve had laughed. Told him he was doing so well, that he could take just a little more.

Billy had come the instant Steve’s thick dick split him open, shooting wet and messy all over Steve’s empty college application forms.

“Harrington can take it,” Billy tells Max.

“It’s not nice,” she says.

“Yeah, well, I’m not nice, Maxine.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“I’ll call you what I want.”

“ _Billy_.”

“What.”

“Look, for some bizarre reason, Steve seems to want you around, even though you’re a total dick to him _and_ you nearly killed him. Maybe don’t scare off the only friend you have.”

Billy says nothing.

She huffs a sigh, and she unbuckles her seatbelt, about to storm off in a huff.

“Wait, Max?”

“What?”

Billy swallows thickly around whatever’s blocking his throat. “Don’t let my dad catch you with Sinclair. Ever. Be careful.”

She gives him a look like he’s stupid. “Yeah, dude, I know.”

“How’d you know I wouldn’t tell him?”

“You’re a dick, but you’re not an _asshole_.”

Billy decides he’ll take it.

-

It’s actually kind of Billy’s fault, the slow eradication of the invisible boundary between them. It’s just, he’s been sitting at the same fucking table in the cafeteria at lunch since he got to this shithole, and at least three times a week, without fail, he has to listen to motherfucking Tommy Hagan complain about Harrington. At first, it was kind of funny, all their small-town bullshit. It made Billy feel older, wiser than them, with all the actual, legitimate shit he’d gone through to end up in Hawkins, Indiana. Then, it became a bit of a mystery that Billy couldn’t help wanting to solve: why would the handsome, charming homecoming king ditch his popularity for some mousy chick who treated him like garbage?

After November, after feeling the give of Steve’s soft cheek under his fists, it just became more fuel on the fire of Billy’s burning humiliation.

Even Carol was getting sick of it by Christmas, and Carol was the most loyal bitch Billy had ever met.

It had been a little exciting, when the new term started after New Year’s, because Tommy had indulged in a solid week of bitching about Steve daring to show up to his New Year’s party. It was kind of hilarious, because Tommy hadn’t even known – he’d been so trashed that he only found out from Tina, three days later, that Steve had even been there. It had sent little shocks of excitement down Billy's spine, hiding his grin behind his shitty cafeteria meatloaf, because it was proof that no one knew what he and Steve had done that night.

By now, though, it’s grating on Billy’s last nerve. Steve deserves a hell of a lot better than being mocked by some guy who used to be his friend -- _best friend, we went to fucking kindergarten together_ , Hagan mumbles, like that means jack shit now – for sharing a lunch table with his ex-girlfriend.

He kind of deserves a hell of a lot better than sharing a lunch table with the girl who cheated on him and the guy she cheated with, too.

Tommy’s midway through explaining why Byers is a freak (again) when Billy snaps just a little, calls, “Hey, Harrington!” through the entire cafeteria to Steve, who’s walking over to Wheeler and Byers’ table with a tray full of wieners and mashed potatoes.

Steve glances over.

“Come here,” Billy says.

The table around him falls silent.

Steve walks over. “What’s up, Hargrove?” He asks, the picture of a cool, collected dork in his Levis and his polo shirt. Why the people of Hawkins ever mistook him for some sort of rebel is beyond Billy.

“Funny story,” Billy says, leaning back as far as he can against the wall. It’s hard to really sprawl like a dick on a plastic bench, but he’s gonna try. “I swear Hagan here has not shut up about you for about four months. I think he misses you.”

“Aw,” Steve says, “that’s sweet, Tommy.”

“Fuck off,” Tommy says, ever the wordsmith.

“Anyway,” Billy says, “I’m getting pretty fucking sick of it, so either kiss and make up or punch each other’s teeth out so you _stop talking about it._ ”

Steve snorts. “Not even you knocked my teeth loose, Hargrove, I’m pretty sure Tommy here doesn’t stand a chance.”

There’s a little murmur of surprise down the table, because people suspected it was Billy behind Steve’s fucked up face, back in November, but neither of them were saying anything, and Steve was skipping so much then he barely even ate at school anyway.

Billy just looks at him.

Steve sighs. “Fine. Tommy, Carol, I’m sorry I called you guys assholes, it was kinda harsh.”

Carol smiles at him, because she’s a peach, really.

Tommy frowns. “You’re only saying that because we were _right_ and Wheeler is a _frigid bitch_ and a _slut_ \--”

Steve slams his tray down on the table, runny potatoes slopping over the side of his plate. “You shut the fuck up about Nancy or—”

“Which is it?” Billy drawls. Steve flinches, like he’d forgotten Billy was there. “I mean, frigid bitch, I can see that. Slut, seems unlikely. Both is a contradiction in terms.”

Tommy opens his mouth, flustered, but Carol kicks him sharply in the side.

“We’re sorry, too, Steve,” she says. “We were outta line and we didn’t know how serious you were about her.”

“It’s cool,” Steve says. “How’ve you been, Carol?”

Carol groans. “I’m flunking Calculus.”

Steve holds up his hand for a high five. “Me too.”

Abruptly, Billy realizes he has totally shot himself in the foot.

Steve’s _everywhere_ after that. He’s at lunch, straddling the shitty plastic bench and throwing peas across the table for Billy to catch in his mouth while Nicole and Tina giggle over them. He’s in study hall, throwing his arm over Carol’s shoulders and painting dismal futures where they wait tables for all their classmates instead of actually focusing on their damn Calculus homework. He’s in the parking lot after school, waiting on his nerds while Billy waits on Max, telling Tommy to shut his damn mouth when he dares call Henderson a nerd even though Steve called Henderson a nerd himself _seven times_ last week.

He’s sitting up in his bed at two AM on a Wednesday night with the lights on, just in case Billy comes around.

Billy’s—

Billy’s not exactly what you’d call proud of the way he behaves. In general, sure – he knows he’s abrasive and makes it hard for people to get close to him, and mostly, he even does it on purpose. He knows he’s got a short fuse and he cares too much about how he looks and just generally does a lot of shit that makes Max call him a dick. But specifically around Steve, he’s a whole other kind of out of control. Steve somehow flips this switch Billy didn’t even know he had that gets Billy panting after him, first to pay attention to him, then, when that didn’t work, to fight back, and now, to just touch him at all.

He crawls in through Steve’s window on a Wednesday night at two AM, and Steve’s already looking at him with that speculative look in his eye, and Billy says, before Steve can do what he always does and take control of the situation, “Can I—”

Steve closes the textbook he was only pretending to read anyway. “Can you?”

“I wanna…” Billy trails off, his ears flushing red. He crowds in close to Steve, kisses him. He thinks, _Hello_. He wants it to be like that, with Steve, wants to kiss him hello and goodbye and ask how his day was even though he was there and he knows how Steve’s day was, but he can’t, so this is the next best thing.

He’s kneeling up on the bed, cupping Steve’s face in his hands while he kisses Steve. Steve’s hair is a little tough, a little crinkly under his hands from product. Steve’s arm is a warm brand across his lower back, holding Billy close. 

“I wanna try something,” Billy mumbles against his lips.

“Yeah?” Steve says.

Billy kisses at his neck, drags his teeth down the sides softly without leaving a mark. Steve fidgets, his legs spreading a little. He’s wearing basketball shorts, and Billy is a huge dumbass. “You’re so hot,” he breathes out against Steve’s skin.

Steve groans. 

And it’s like – okay, so Billy hasn’t really done this, before. Admitted out loud how gone he is on Steve. Admitted out loud that he thinks Steve is handsome, that he’s had wet dreams about what he’s about to do. He’d just about gotten around to admitting to _himself_ he thought boys were attractive at all when Neil came storming up the stairs to the loft of their old apartment to find him tentatively kissing Miguel from next door. He remembered his head slamming on the corner of his dresser when Neil pushed him; he remembered the sound his ribs had made when Neil’s foot hit them.

He remembered how gentle Neil had been with him, afterwards, sewing up the cut to Billy’s forehead. How stern his tone had been when he’d said, “I won’t have my son being a faggot, d’you hear me? This is in your best interest. Indiana will be a fresh start for all of us.”

Billy had said nothing as they loaded up the cars for the move to Hawkins, but there was a part of him that had been wondering since he was twelve why, if it was in his own best interest, Neil taped up Billy’s ribs himself instead of taking him to the hospital; why he told Miguel’s mama that Billy had fallen down the stairs when he hadn’t and they all knew full well he hadn’t.

But here he is, in Hawkins, under the bright light of Steve Harrington’s bedroom lamp, with his lips on Steve Harrington’s skin, and he’s never been more sure of who he is and that it’s right he is this way.

“I want you so much,” he mumbles out, pulling at Steve’s shirt collar to get his mouth on Steve’s nipples. “All the damn time, you’re _it_ for me, baby.”

He kisses Steve again before Steve can tell him that Steve’s not really like that, they’re just having fun, Steve just feels sorry for him.

“Can I suck you off?” He whispers against Steve’s lips.

“Yes,” Steve says immediately. “Yes, please.”

Billy’s never done this before, but he hadn’t done a lot of things before Steve and they’ve all been good so far. He gets his thumbs hooked into Steve’s basketball shorts – and jeez, his dick’s already plumped up against them, long and thick. Billy’s mouth waters.

 _Cover your teeth,_ Billy remembers from the article in _Cosmo_ he took away from Max last week because she’s, like, twelve, and definitely does not need to be reading articles on how to give blowjobs.

He licks his lips. 

Steve groans.

Billy touches his tongue to the head of Steve’s dick slowly, evaluating. It tastes like skin, like sweat and a little like something else salty.

“Christ, Billy,” Steve says reverently. Billy looks up at him. His eyes are blown wide, mouth wide open. He’s flushed down to his chest, moles standing out against the pink of his skin. He’s adorable. He’s _edible_.

So Billy stops pussyfooting around it. He opens wide, takes Steve’s dick in his mouth. 

The noise Steve makes is really gratifying.

Billy gets a little lost in experimenting, sliding his mouth up and down. He can only take so much, and Steve’s seriously long, so he gets a hand around the base, tries to make a rhythm. When he flicks his tongue out to trace the head, Steve’s whole body jerks.

Billy smirks around Steve’s dick, does it again. He’s getting into it, now, moving slow and careful but steadier, rhythmic, up, down, flick of the tongue, repeat.

He can taste Steve’s heartbeat.

A hand settles, heavy, on Billy’s head. Steve’s fingers thread through his hair, tug just a little, and Billy—

Moans. Loud, muffled by Steve’s cock in his mouth. He’s hard. He’s been hard, but now he’s instantly, outrageously aware of it, pressed up tight against the fly of his jeans, throbbing with his pulse, so hard he feels like he might explode if he doesn’t get touched.

But he’s no quitter, and Steve’s doing it again, tugging at his hair.

“So good, Billy,” Steve’s huffing out. “Oh my god, that feels so good, keep—keep going, please.”

Billy’s jaw is starting to feel strained, held open and immobile as he slides his mouth up and down Steve’s dick. It’s stretching too far, and he longs to close his mouth, just for a second, but Steve’s hand in his hair is keeping him in place, keeping him focused, so he keeps going, keeps slobbering his tongue over the head, dripping saliva around his fingers on the base. It’s nasty, and it’s too much, and Steve’s fingers tighten in Billy’s hair and Billy's dick twitches hard against the rough cotton of his boxers.

“Billy!” Steve gasps out. “You’re doing so good for me, babe, just a little bit more…”

When Steve comes, his dick jerks on Billy’s tongue, twice, three, four times, pulsing out warm, cloying spunk. Billy swallows without a second thought and Steve’s hand clenches in Billy’s hair and Billy comes, hard, in his pants, without touching himself once. Steve’s dick drops out of his mouth as he moans out loud, draws in air desperately, hitches his hips to rub himself against the roughness of his own pants through the suddenness of a debilitating orgasm.

Steve groans out a wordless noise, drags Billy up to his mouth by his hair. “Fuck, baby, so hot,” he groans out, kissing Billy between words. “Came for me just like that, didn’t’cha, on your knees for me.”

Billy sobs an affirmation, dick jerking through a vicious aftershock.

“Fuck,” Steve says.

“Uh-huh,” Billy agrees, muffled by his shoulder.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Steve repeats, dragging a hand across his face. “Oh my god.”

“So it was good?” Billy asks, hating himself.

Steve laughs. “Billy, I think you just destroyed most of the working parts of my brain. Goodbye calculus.”

Billy huffs a laugh. “You should actually study with Carol.”

“Ugh,” Steve whines. “Carol’s such a bitch, though.”

Billy pokes him in the side. “That’s what’s so great about her.”

Steve pokes him back. “Yeah, alright,” Steve says. “Still not forgiving you for bringing Tommy back into my life.”

Sighing, Billy says, “I guess that’s fair.”

It takes him a while – until his jeans are in Steve’s laundry basket and he’s wearing a extra pair of Steve’s sweatpants, until the lights are off and Steve’s starting to doze off against him, to work up the nerve to ask. “Carol…” he begins, his palm resting against Steve’s chest. “Carol said you were really serious about Nancy Wheeler, huh?”

Steve shifts under him until he can get an arm around Billy. “Yeah,” he says. “I was.”

“And you’re still friends with her even though she cheated on you.”

“Yup.”

Billy doesn’t know how to put what he wants to ask into words, how to take the yawning void of how much he wants Steve and put it into an open-ended, non-committal little phrase that Steve can ignore, so he doesn’t.

Steve lets his fingers walk tip-toe down Billy’s ribcage. “I was a dick, before I met Nancy,” he says.

“Like me,” Billy snorts.

“You were also a dick before you met Nancy,” Steve says, placid, unmoved. “Being with her…I changed. I got better. You know I used to shove Jonathan into lockers? Called him a fag, too. Look at me now.”

Billy’s heart is all the way up in his throat. He’s too busy choking on it to formulate a response.

Steve waits a while, then says, “if I turned around and hated her now, for hurting me, it would be like it all didn’t happen. Like I never got better. I don’t want that.”

Even later, when Billy’s almost asleep – “I’m not still in love with her, if that’s what you’re asking.”

He pretends he never heard it. It’s easier, that way, in the morning, when he climbs back out the window and spends the day pretending that being around Steve isn’t changing him, too. 

-

(When it’s all said and done, Billy wakes up in a hospital room choking on the tube that’s been keeping him alive.

By the time the nurses have gotten him calmed down and breathing properly again, the bundle of coats stretched out on the visitor’s chairs in his room have gone upright and turned out to be Steve Harrington in yesterday’s clothes, hair a mess.

He comes to stand by Billy’s bedside, hands clenched into the rail at the side of the bed, knuckles white.

“I love you,” he says. “I know you don’t want me to say it, because you never fucking let me, but you were _dead_ and I’m saying it whether you wanna hear it or not.”

Billy’s voice croaks and dies out on the first word, but Steve at least gets to hear, “you too,” before Billy passes out again.)

**Author's Note:**

> This one was kind of hard to get out for me. I started it like...four fics ago, and this series kept growing and morphing and adding on bits, but I couldn't quite get this one out. Billy's POV is really painful to write for some reason. Please tell me what you think, this is maybe at the heart of this series for me and it means a lot to me.
> 
> The title is from "Put Your Money on Me" by the Struts. Honestly just put all the fic titles together and you'll get a good chunk of my writing playlist.
> 
> I made a [timeline](https://bewires.tumblr.com/post/190383828850/timeline-for-some-dumb-fanfiction) for this fic at my tumblr, mostly so I could stop counting on my fingers to figure out which date to write when I reference a year. Feel free to check it out for reference (also has notes on a few things I haven't mentioned at all yet and future fics)
> 
> The next story will probably be Carol POV.


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